- Most Forex traders lose all their money.
- Using the robot posted here in trading Forex does not guarantee success.
- Trading this robot could lead to serious financial loss.
- Trading this robot without understanding its underlying trading strategies guarantees traders will lose their money.
- This is not a set-and-forget ea; there is no such thing and anyone who tries to claim there is, is either stupid or lying. This ea requires frequent manual intervention.
- At best, a trading robot is only 90% as good as the manual strategy it trades. At best. At worst, it can be much less effective. If the strategy is rubbish, so is the robot.
- To trade this robot, you have to understand:
- How to use EA's.
Intro
Pipcruiser commissioned me to code this privately a few weeks ago. He has decided to share it with the rest of you - a gesture of enormous generosity. Thanks Niels, we owe you one.
This is an automation of a trading system that Niels has been trading live for some time. The EA is experimental; the system is not.
Remember what a bugger it was trading last week? How we sat around for ages waiting for the dd on our FB accounts to clear? How they cleared in a rush towards the end of the week?
Pipcruiser's Pipmasher stayed out of the markets until they started to move back into trend and the trades were fantastic. Two days saw the demo balance increase by 10%. There are 7 trades still open, with a combined dd of about 40 pips.
Trading strategy
For the purposes of this document: MN1(1) is last month; W1(1) is last week; D1(1) is yesterday.
PP is a D1 trend trading strategy. The setup is:
Long setup: MN1(1) up; W1(1) up; we are looking for a buy trigger.
Short setup: MN1(1) down; W1(1) down; we are looking for a sell trigger.
Any other combo is a mixed signal and so there can be no trade.
The trigger is the D1(1) going in the wrong direction.
Example trade
Taking a buy as an example:
- MN1(1) up
- W1(1) up
- D1(1) down: send a pending trade PendingBufferPips above the high of the D1(1) candle.
There is no trade on Tuesday if Monday's candle was up. If Tuesday then falls, PP sends the pending at the open of the Wednesday candle. If Wednesday then falls, PP is supposed to move the pending to the high + PendingBufferPips of the Wednesday candle at the open of Thursday, and so on.
Set your trading times to a few minutes after the open of the new daily candle to make sure it has had time to form - there is no rush. Leave PP a short window of time in which to send the pending. You can see how mine is set. Do not ask time-related questions here - I shall delete them. Look at the clock on your wall when you know your broker opens a new D1 candle and open your trading time c. 10 minutes after that.
Unfilled pendings are supposed to be deleted by an expiry time at the end of the week, calculated by PP. The code that calculates the deletion time is not quite correct yet, so we may have to manually delete on Friday.
This is an inspired example of pure price-action trading and I am hopeful that this could be the most successful bot I have coded so far. For sure, it stayed out of trouble last week during a period when even Shelley's Trading Fiend endured some DD for a substantial length of time.
Different brokers = different D1 candles
The default trading times are based on the broker's time. By broker time, every D1 candle opens at 0.00. Any reputable broker should open at a 0.00 time that equates with the recognisable start of the trading day i.e. Sydney open. Do not expect to have results even remotely comparable with 0.00 = Sydney if your broker adopts a different D1 candle open time. There is an example here of a monthly candle that moved just 7 pips down overall on out GP charts, and so showed up as a down candle. Brokers opening a short while later had the candle as an up candle. Ok, so it is rare for an MN1 candle to move so little, but it can happen. Frankly, in Forex trading timing is everything.
Inputs
- Longer, Medium, Trading are the time frames, defaulting to monthly, weekly and daily. You can play around with different tf's if you wish. I know that Niels is.
- CloseTradesOnTrendChange: if enabled, this tells PPoS to close market orders and delete pending trades if the trend is no longer with the trades.
- MarketOrder: sends an immediate market trade if this is enabled. Disabled by default.
- PendingOrder: sends a pending stop order at PendingBufferPips above/below the hilo of the previous candle, or the current market. You cannot have both MarketOrder and MarketOrder enabled.
- UseTradingCandle: tells PP to use the previous candle hilo to calculate the stop order price.
- FridayPendingExpiryHours: tells PP to calculate an expiry time - by default 16 hours into the Friday candle. Isn't working, probably because my formula is wrong.
- TradeMonday: allows Monday trading, based on the Friday candle. Detects and ignores a Sunday candle. Disabled by default.
Take profit and stop loss defaults are based on pipcruiser's post at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 41#p101441.
Usual Bob stuff
It is all there along with the usual other stuff, so read the attached user guide for details. You can combine the above with Slope, Css, RSI2 etc. Take your pick. Use different time frames and play to your hearts content.
The TradingTimeFrame input
This must be the time frame you intend to trade as the EA bases all of its calculations on it. This allows you to change time frames on your chart to view different scenarios without disturbing the bot. The downside of getting this wrong is something you will discover to your cost.
Chart screenshots
The EA can take a picture of your chart when it opens or closes a trade. Use this to post pictures here if you suspect that the EA has not behaved as expected. There is a section of inputs just underneath the minimum pips section, with inputs to turn this featureon/ off and to adjust the height and width of the snap. Files are saved with the name "ChartScreenShot" and the ticket number, when the EA opens or closes a trade. Navigate to the files via File/Open Data Folder/MQL4/Files. Remember to delete these files from time to time to avoid clogging up your disk drive.
Setting up your charts
Pay a quick visit to http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... =48&t=3860 and download Art's 'Charts Into Alphabetical Order script'. This script will save you hours of faffing around; instructions for use in the post.
Confused? Help is at hand
Worried that your questions about rock-bottom basics might get you into trouble here? You should be. There is a thread though where you can safely ask the most basic of questions: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 80#p113580 Pay it a visit.
In conclusion
Have fun folks. Niels and I are.
Matters of general interest
Go here to download and run the script that will fill your platform's missing chart history: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... f=15&t=254
Read this post:
http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... p?f=6&t=78 Newbie traders, read this for inspiration and warning. Those of you who have suffered losses, read it for inspiration.
Masterly summary of hedging: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4977179
EA coding
I receive may requests to code EA's. Traders, if I code your EA for free, then I will share it here. If you want me to code your EA without sharing, then my fee is $100 payable into my paypal account. I explain why at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... ?f=15&t=79, at the bottom of the post.
Useful utilities/EA's/scripts
- Multi purpose trade manager: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... ?f=21&t=64
- Account equity analyser: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4709098, which includes a template for both USD and the Euro.
- Past-trades display indi by squalou; shows a graphical display of the success/failure of trades in your History tab. Breathtaking piece of work. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost3830610
- My shell EA – the code I use to produce EA's so quickly. http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... ?f=15&t=79